The Memory of Running: A Novel - Hardcover

McLarty, Ron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670033634 ISBN 13: 9780670033638

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2004

Synopsis

Working as a quality control inspector at a toy factory in Rhode Island, friendless alcoholic Smithy Ide considers himself a loser until a tragic event prompts him to set off on an epic cross-country bicycle journey that promises him a final chance to become the man he has always wanted to be. 300,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Ron McLarty is an award-winning actor and playwright best known for his appearances on television series, including Law & Order, Sex and the City, The Practice, and Judging Amy. He has appeared in films and on the stage, where he has directed many of his own plays.

Reviews

Adult/High School–This is a great first novel. Smithson Ide, 43, is a heavy drinker who weighs 279 lbs. As a teen, his beautiful sister slowly descended into mental illness. The family got him a Raleigh bicycle so that he might find Bethany more quickly when she ran away. Eventually, she disappeared, and the Ides couldn't seem to go on. Smithy begins his story as he learns that his parents have been seriously injured in an accident. At their wake, he finds a letter that states that Bethany's body is in a morgue in Los Angeles. Drunk, dressed in a suit, and with no money, Smithy gets on his bike and begins to pedal west. Readers are hooked once his odyssey begins. He meets unique characters and experiences many perils, and is supported throughout his trip by phone conversations with his neighbor, who has always loved him. The real story, though, is about Smithy's visceral response to the plight of his family, whose dignity has been beaten down because of their years of struggle. In the tradition of literary heroes, Smithy Ide rallies as he rides west to rescue his sister one last time. McLarty's writing is notable for its juxtaposition of humor and heartbreak. Smithy's matter-of-fact tone belies the often surprising and laugh-out-loud situations that he unwittingly falls into. At the same time, readers get a sense of his gentleness as he tries to cope with a world that for the most part treats him badly or ignores him.–Catherine Gilbride, Farifax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Meet Smithy Ide, the hero (or, if you prefer, anti-hero) of Ron McLarty's first novel, The Memory of Running. Smithy is 43 years old, 279 pounds and single. He drinks too much and smokes too much. Beyond his work as a factory supervisor, where he inspects action-figure parts to make sure that the legs aren't where the arms should be and vice versa, Smithy's life is pretty much devoid of ambition -- that is, until his parents die in a car accident. This Big Bang in Smithy's life sets both the novel and him in motion.

The novels chapters alternate between Smithy's present and past. In the present, he oversees his parents' double funeral and, while inside their house, finds a letter from the Los Angeles Department of Health revealing that his older sister, Bethany, who disappeared 20 years ago, is dead. Her remains, however, are being held until someone claims them. Drunk and severely out of shape, Smithy hops onto his old Raleigh bicycle, keeps pedaling, and thus embarks on a cross-country journey from East Providence, R.I., to Los Angeles.

In the flashback chapters, Bethany is still alive, but she is hearing voices and disappearing for stretches at a time, sometimes taking off her clothes in public and standing stock-still until a family member comes to retrieve her. Young Smithy adores his sister, and the Ides spend a good deal of their time either tracking down or watching over Bethany. But the voices in her head are clearly winning, and we know it's only a matter of time before she's gone for good. And so the novel progresses: The closer Bethany gets to disappearing for the last time, the closer Smithy in the present gets to Los Angeles.

The story of how The Memory of Running came to be published is legendary. McLarty wrote the novel in the 1980s, but no publisher would even consider it; the audiotape company for which McLarty worked as a voice actor eventually released it as a book-on-tape; Stephen King heard the tape and wrote an article headlined "The Best Book You Can't Read" for Entertainment Weekly; a bidding war ensued; and McLarty, who has also sold film rights, became a wealthy man. More power to him, I say. But now that the book is no longer "The Best Book You Can't Read" -- it has front-table display at my local store -- how good is it?

McLarty clearly cares for Smithy Ide and his sister, so there's a beating heart at the core of the novel. But the book is not without its faults. The weakest parts take place in the present. Smithy's trip across the country on a bicycle quickly suffers the pitfalls of such stories by becoming episodic. Town after town, Smithy meets one madcap character after another -- a ranting priest in Rhode Island who confesses his sins; a nutty 89-year-old artist in Washington Square Park who keeps calling Smithy "fat boy"; a doctor in Indiana who thinks Smithy is trying to exploit a man dying of AIDS. This one-damned-thing-after-another plot's problems are that each episode lacks a larger purpose and the structure becomes predictable. Since any one of these scenes could easily be excised without affecting the novel as a whole, the question becomes, are the scenes entertaining in and of themselves? For many readers they will be, if only for their sheer lunacy and invention, but I rarely believed the characters in them. E.M. Forster rightly said that flat characters are at their best when they are comic, but even flat comic characters need to be credible.

The minor characters aren't the only credibility problem here. Smithy gets shot, he crashes his bicycle at 65 miles per hour, a pick-up truck hits him, and yet he keeps on going. For a character who otherwise resembles Everyman, Smithy defies all laws of physiology. There's no attempt to explain his superhuman resilience when, in truth, the bike ride alone probably would have killed the poor guy, given his general health.

The strongest sections are those in the past when Smithy and his family must deal with the haunted Bethany. This story has more of a significant arc, more purpose, more depth, and McLarty renders a number of genuinely heartbreaking moments -- such as when Bethany takes off all her clothes on a snowy and gray day, stands on one of the girders of a bridge and freezes into one of her poses. "Bethany told me," Smithy recalls, "that if she could stand so even her heart didn't beat against her chest, everything, everywhere, would be all right." As a rowing crew from Brown University passes underneath, Bethany falls from the girder and back-flops into the polluted Providence River. McLarty's attention to details in these scenes is so precise that the reader is brought fully into the moment, unlike the scenes in present-time, where he often sacrifices precision for wackiness.

Despite these complaints, the novel will doubtless find a wide audience, in large part because Smithy Ide is a character readers will root for. They'll root for him because Ron McLarty clearly loves him. My only hope for McLarty's next novel is that all of his characters, small and large, earn that love.

Reviewed by John McNally
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

McLarty, a veteran Hollywood actor, first published Memory as an audiobook. After Stephen King sang its praises in Entertainment Weekly as “The Best Book You Can’t Read,” Viking purchased it for $2 million. Critics disagree about whether it was worth the price. While some found the larger-than-life situations to be refreshingly original and an insightful comment on modern society’s shortcomings, others saw them as contrived or just plain unbelievable. Several also cited the novel’s structure and pacing (alternating chapters on Smithy’s journey with those on his family’s troubled past) as distracting and unnecessarily complex. Smithy, too, was at turns engaging and irritating, though he’ll definitely make you forget your own problems for a while.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Smithy Ide is a really nice guy. But he's also an overweight, friendless, womanless, hard-drinking, 43-year-old self-professed loser with a breast fetish and a dead-end job, given to stammering "I just don't know" in life's confusing moments. When Smithy's entire family dies, he embarks on a transcontinental bicycle trip to recover his sister's body and rediscover what it means to live. Along the way, he flashes back to his past and the hardships of his beloved sister's schizophrenia, while his dejection encourages strangers to share their life stories. The road redeems the innocent Smithy: he loses weight; rescues a child from a blizzard; rebuffs the advances of a nubile, "apple-breasted" co-cyclist after seeing a vision of his dead sister; and nurtures a telephone romance with a paraplegic family friend as he processes his rocky past. McLarty, a playwright and television actor, propels the plot with glib mayhem—including three tragic car accidents in 31 pages and a death by lightning bolt—and a lot of bighearted and warm but faintly mournful humor. It's a funny, poignant, slightly gawky debut that aims, like its protagonist, to please—and usually does.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670033634
• ISBN 13: 9780670033638
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368